Páginas

jueves, 23 de febrero de 2017

Spanishness without quotation marks

Independent
animation is a risky project of faith

Pedro Rivero and Carlos Juarez
directed and produced “Psiconautas: The forgotten children” and won the Goya
for best animated picture. They point ideological excuses to underrate Spanish
cinema and complain about campaigns to defenestrate animation.

Independent animation is “a risky
project of faith” because it had to win prizes around the world before getting
a Spanish release. They had few backups and didn’t find financing until winning
the Goya for the Birdboy short film. The film is based on a graphic novel by
Alberto Vazquez, who also co-directed, for not being a commercial proposal to
industrialize.

Juarez wasn’t surprised about not
winning the Goya because the international tour was good and the biggest
handicap was the lack of visibility. Psiconautas had an “intangible value” the
country should enhance in words of Rivero. The international recognition of
Birdboy let them starting to write the movie script.

Psiconautas has a different
premise than most of the Goya contenders because isn’t a parody “with
spanishness between quotation marks” or founded by heavy-hitters of the
industry. Even animation doesn’t have as presence as fiction in the Goyas, they
are produced by cycles and are some of the highest-grossing productions thanks
to the family-film studios like Pixar. On the other hand, animation for adults
like Persepolis doesn’t impact the Spanish box-office because there aren’t big
studios behind.

Faith
that comes with risk

Carlos Juarez reveals the secret
of escaping the animation jungle: dimentioning without becoming mad. Those
actions are shared by a team who believes in the same and have ambition.
Euskadi has some of the best backgrounds on Spain with the economic helps to
produce. Pedro Rivero explains that risks are taken by the creators, while
producers appear later in the way.

Cinema affects culture and public
opinion, so politicians tend to demonize instead of taking it as an industry
that generates work. Basque animation is more possible for institutions and not
being a passenger trend, to the point of proposing a Sponsorship Law. Rivero
jokes about the “influencer” politicians afraid of the General Society of
Authors, who let phone companies downloading illegal movies instead of
improving free access to culture.

To bookend, animation can deal
with some themes better than fiction for letting abstraction. For example,
Basque violence was always been dealt with humor in TV, while animation would
approach it with a reflexive attitude.